Encourage your customers to create profiles

One of the first things you need to do is allow your customers to create profiles on your platform. Those profiles will help you implement other strategies as we continue through this guide.

Once the accounts are created, you’ll be able to monitor the behaviors of your customers based on their profiles.

Your customers are perfectly comfortable with you tracking their habits as long as it’s improving their experience.

As you can see from these numbers, customers want you to:

make it easier for them to shop

give them relevant offers

provide them with a more personalized experience

improve their experience on multiple channels

Not only are your customers comfortable with you monitoring their behaviors through their profiles, but they actually expect it. In fact, more than half of consumers say they expect brands to anticipate their needs so they can receive relevant suggestions.

You’ll eventually be able to recommend products based on shopping and browsing behavior, but we’ll discuss that in greater detail later.

The best way to encourage your customers to create accounts is by making it as easy as possible for them.

They don’t want to take tons of unnecessary steps to set up their accounts. Make sure you limit your form fields needed for the account creation.

Think about what information you need from the customer that will help you personalize their experience.

Let’s take customer profiles as an example. If a customer creates a profile during the checkout process, you’ll know their address because they need to provide you with shipping and billing information.

Your customers in Texas shouldn’t be getting the same emails as your customers in New Hampshire if your company is advertising a winter sale.

Those subscribers in Texas don’t care about discounted winter hats and ski pants.

Their customers are primarily located in the United States and Canada.

While the two countries may be similar, the company still wants to offer tailored customer experience based on the location of their customers.

For example, Canadian customers will want to see measurements of clothing in centimeters since they use the metric system. And people browsing in the United States will see “color,” while the Canadians will see “colour.”

Yes, any English-speaking person can understand American English, but not having the site customized to the customer location can still hurt the company’s sales.

By allowing its website visitors to choose their country, SAXX ensures they’ll be shown the right content.

Those of you who have an international brand need to take this process one step further. Look at the options on the Nike website:

Your website isn’t the only platform that can be personalized based on location.

You can use your mobile app to pinpoint the exact location of your customers as opposed to broader locations, e.g., the state or country.

When someone downloads your app, ask them to agree to share their location with you so you can track it. Then, you can send them notifications using geofencing technology.

With geofencing, you can set up an area around one of your store locations. When an app user enters the location, they’ll get a notification that encourages them to make a purchase.

For example, let’s say you own a restaurant chain.

Someone with your mobile app walks within a block of one of your locations during lunch time. You can send them a discount off their lunch purchase that day.

But first, you need to analyze the results of the feedback. Don’t just implement changes for the sake of it—that won’t deliver a return on your investment.

But if you notice that a large percentage of your customers are providing similar feedback and suggestions to improve your process, you should take that very seriously.

Implementing these changes will make your customers realize they are part of your process and create a bond with your brand.

Recommend relevant products

I briefly mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to discuss it again in greater detail.

You already know you need to use the information provided in the customer profiles to personalize content for them. But there are certain pieces of extremely valuable information that you can’t get via a form field: what the customers are looking for and what they are buying.

But you can find out that information through the browsing and purchase histories of your customers. That information will allow you to suggest relevant products to them.

If you do, consumers will be more likely to buy from your brand, whether you operate online or in person:

Recommending products to your customers also narrows their options.

Roughly 40% of consumers left a website to buy from a competitor instead because they felt overwhelmed by too many options. Don’t let this happen to you.

If one of your customers recently purchased a surfboard and a wetsuit, it’s safe to say they’ll be spending time at the beach and in the water. So you could suggest something like a paddleboard and sunscreen because it’s relevant to their purchase history.

Let your customers be part of the personalization process

Combine your personalization strategy with an interactive process.

If a customer doesn’t have a profile, you can still get more information from them to personalize the content they see.

For example, Warby Parker has a feature on its website I love. Obviously, glasses aren’t a one-size-fits-all product.

But with so many options, it can be overwhelming for consumers to find exactly what they’re looking for. To help narrow the results, the brand asks their customers some questions.

First, it asks if you’re browsing for men’s or women’s styles. Then, the questionnaire asks the type of fit you’re looking for.

As you can see, the cartoon faces are all of men because that’s what I selected in the first step. It’s another subtle personalized touch.

Next, they want to know your color preferences for glasses.

After that, you need to provide them with the shapes of frames you prefer the most.

The questions get even more detailed.

Warby Parker asks when you had your last eye exam. It also wants to know if you’re interested in eyeglasses, sunglasses, or both.

This relates to my last point about narrowing down the results. You don’t want to overwhelm your customers.

Now the product results will be based on the preferences chosen by the customer.

Write content from the first person perspective

Try to establish a personal relationship with your customers.

In theory, this is much easier for small business owners who actually see their customers on a regular basis.

But even if you’re an ecommerce shop or a global brand, there are still ways for you to create this type of relationship based on how you communicate with your customers.

By writing content from the first person perspective, just like I do when I blog, you will make your customers feel more comfortable. Write as if you’re talking to a friend.

You don’t need to be formal all the time.

Don’t get me wrong: you should still write using proper grammar and avoiding slang terms. Just write as if you’re having a casual conversation.

Do this with your emails, blogs, and content on your website.

Sign emails using your name. Your emails should be coming from yourname@yourcompany.com.

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Here is a 6 step approach for building backlinks in a systematic way.
Check out the full post at Niche Site Project:
http://nichesiteproject.com/6-step-link-building-plan-for-niche-sites/
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